Match Set
by bluedawn01
Summary: Rose Tyler has just turned twenty-one and it's time for her to be Pulled to her Soul-match. But when things don't feel the same for her as they have for everyone else she's known, she starts to doubt the future. Meanwhile, poor John Noble has been waiting for...well, quite some time for his Match to emerge. It will take a bit of trying, but they'll find one another. Somehow.
1. Chapter 1

Twenty-one. In exactly eleven minutes, Rose Tyler would turn twenty-one and the next phase of her life would begin. She sat cross-legged on her bed, staring at the bright, blinking numbers on her alarm clock and ran her gloved fingers over the worn leather cover of the well-loved photo book in her lap. A knock came to her door and she looked up to see her mother enter and sit next to her quietly.

"How are you doing, sweetheart?" Jackie inquired, softly. She remembered being in Rose's position years ago. The waiting, the anticipation, the awful nerves as you watched the time click down, wondering how much and how fast your life would change.

"Nervous," Rose laughed. "What...what does it feel like?"

Jackie moved closer and put her arm around her daughter's shoulders. "Well, it feels different for everyone, I've heard. For me, it was like an obnoxious, insistent push, nagging me where to go, what street to take, what building to go in until I did it. Lucky for me, you dad had been at the pub right down the road, delivering menus. I walked straight into him and I knew right away."

"D'you think I'll be like that?" Rose asked, fidgeting with the book again, flipping through the pages to stare down at her mother and father's happy faces, waving at the camera from the steps of a church.

"It takes some people longer to find each other, Rose. You could find him tomorrow or next week or next year! Remember you don't have to rush into anything. You can even get a job, go to school and ignore the Pull for a few years."

"What if I have to go really far, Mum? To another country or another continent? What if he doesn't even speak the same language as me? What if…"

"Rose, sweetie, calm down. If you have to go to another country, that's ok! You're always talking about going on adventures, after all! Rebecca down the hall flew all the way to Beruna and came back with that gorgeous, seven foot tall man who's deaf and they get on just fine now! You've got money saved up and you can call your father and me whenever you need. You'll find him. Even if you have to fly half-way across Terre and learn to speak Boeshane, you'll do it. You can do anything you like, Rose Tyler," she finished, proudly, squeezing Rose's shoulders.

"And he won't know?" Rose inquired, even though she knew the answer. The Soul-matching on Terre was well-established and it had been that way for as long as anyone could remember.

"Of course not. Not until you touch him, skin to skin. And you don't have to do that right away, neither. You can wait it out, get to know him a bit first," Jackie advised, nodding sagely.

"Like you did with Dad?" Rose said, slyly, elbowing her mother in the ribs.

Jackie laughed. "Heavens, no! He was gorgeous! I whipped that glove right off and did the same to him, took his hand and said, 'I'm Jackie. We're gettin' married.'"

"And he blinked at you and said, 'Ok, then!'," Rose finished, giggling.

"And then he kissed me!" Jackie said, sighing happily.

"Dad always says you kissed him," Rose teased.

"Oh, pish tosh. Close enough," Jackie scolded, lovingly, and then she cleared her throat. "Now, remember, young lady, that once you do Acknowledge one another, your bodies are going to start reacting and you may start feeling -"

Rose cut her off quickly, "Ah! Mum! You don't need to give me the talk. I know what happens."

Jackie narrowed her eyes at Rose. "You may think you know what happens, but you don't, not 'til it does. I remember your father and I could barely keep our hands off -"

"La la la! Don't need to know, Mum!" Rose cut her off again, putting her hands over her ears and laughing.

"Well, use protection," Jackie cautioned, shaking a finger at her daughter. "I want grandkids but not just yet."

Both of them looked over at the clock on Rose's bedside, which now read 23:59. "Ready?" Jackie whispered.

"Ready," Rose answered, closing her eyes.

-

It was odd, Rose thought, the next morning. She knew that she really ought to feel different, feel older, feel...Pulled, in some way but she didn't. Not yet, anyway. She tried to brush aside everyone's curious gazes and honest but tiring inquiries about what she would do next and how she felt and where he was. Over the next few months, she looked up different universities, she enrolled in an art course at the local learning center, and she began to think about what she might like to do or where she might like to go next.

Six months later, after forty-five minutes of being trapped in the stairwell fending off Mrs. Morris' very loud and very personal questions about why Rose didn't feel Pulled yet, she'd had enough.

"Mum, Dad, I'm leaving," Rose announced, bursting into their flat and dropping her bag on the floor. "I don't know where I'm going, I don't know when I'll be back, and no, I don't feel anything yet, but I've got to get out of here."

"Mrs. Morris?" her father asked from the couch, kindly, looking up over his newspaper.

"Mrs. Morris, Shireen and her new beau, Keisha and her fiancee, Mickey and Martha, Mr. Potter, Bev, Howard, should I go on? Everybody's harping me about something I have no control over or giving me these pity-looks or patting my shoulder and telling me that I'll be fine and telling me their stories and I'm sick of it!" Rose huffed, waving her arms around. "I just need to get out of here! I'm going to pack my bag and hop on the next train or bus or plane and I'm going to get somewhere that isn't here!"

"Ok, then," Pete nodded, returning to his paper.

" 'Ok, then'?" Rose snapped, incredulously. "I just told you that me, your only daughter, your only child, your little girl, is just going run off into the sunset and all you can say is 'ok, then'?"

Her father lowered the paper again and blinked up at her. "Pack a sweater?" he tried and then smiled at Rose's furious face. He stood up and walked over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. "Rose, this is how it begins. You need to get there. Go do something! Go somewhere exciting! Maybe you'll feel your Pull then. Maybe you won't. When you're ready, you'll follow it. But go on! I'm not worried about you. You'll be wonderful, sweetheart."

Rose's mouth dropped open and she stared at her father. "But -"

"Do try to call once a week, at least. Otherwise you mother will become very difficult to live with." He pulled her into a hug and held her tightly. "And you might want to wait until she gets home to head out."

"So, I'm going, then?" she mumbled into his shoulder.

"You're going," he replied.


	2. Chapter 2

John Noble shifted aside a large pile of invoices on his desk, frowning at the mess. Term at the university would begin soon, he had several large shipments of textbooks to be delivered in the next few weeks, and he'd just lost his newest assistant. Again. It seemed that, after two years, Tegan had finally managed to bump into her Soul-match at the airport yesterday and now the two of them were off to Australis, of all places.

He could call his sister in to help with the bookkeeping, but she and Lee were just settling into their new house and, according to Donna, were spending a lot of time 'starting a family', she'd told him with a wink. He shuddered and shook that thought off. Not something he wanted to think about his sister and her Soul-match doing. Not that Donna wouldn't be a lovely mother, because she would. But to get to that point…

Hefting a large box of books from the counter in the back room, he wandered out to the shelves, grumbling about flighty assistants and university students and bloody Soul-matching in general. His business and the adjoining coffee shop, owned by his friends Amy and Rory, were places frequented by countless twenty-something uni students and community members, making them prime meeting spots and he was always witnessing the brilliant, romantic, breaths-caught moments when Soul-matches met for the first time and every time he saw one, it eroded brittle wall that he'd attempted to build around his own heart.

Almost two decades ago, he'd been just as hopeful as any other promising young man, swinging through his twenties, just waiting for some pretty little thing to bump into him and let him know that his life of loneliness was over and, boy, how had he ever lived before he'd met her?

And then he'd turned thirty, watching as all his friends, most of them already Matched, got married and bought houses and started families and he'd wondered what could possibly be wrong with him. Was he unMatchable? Had his perfect woman taken one look at his big ears and sizeable nose and turned heel to ignore her Pull for the rest of their lives? Did she live on another continent? Was she too poor to get to him? Should he start wandering the world to try and find her?

He knew she wasn't dead. Two years ago, at Donna's prodding, on his thirty-fifth birthday, he'd gone to a specialist who'd explained to him that if the unthinkable had occurred and she'd been gone before she'd even met him, that he would very soon have followed, and never known why.

But here he was, bitter, alone and crowding forty, and very much still alive.

So where was she?

-

The little bell above the door tinkled and John looked up from the register in surprise. He'd just unlocked the door a few minutes ago but hadn't been expecting anyone for a bit. No self-respecting uni student ever set foot into his shop before at least nine. Other than habit, he wasn't even certain why he opened at eight. Even Rory and Amy didn't open until 8:30 and they ran a coffee shop. His brief glance up at the potential patron made him sigh. It was a girl, probably about twenty, blonde, and looking like she was going to need a lot of assistance as she stared, wide-eyed around the immense, bigger-on-the-inside, book-filled store.

Probably a first-year, having just stumbled into town, here for orientation before term began and lost already. He watched her for moment as she wandered over toward the fiction section and disappeared into the stacks. Well, he'd give her a few minutes to get lost and then he'd go rescue her and guide her to the fashion merchandising textbooks or the gossip rags or something.

He got distracted and then, almost half an hour later, when he hadn't heard any further sounds from the aisles or had another customer come in, he went in search of her. To his surprise, he found her sitting on the floor in the science fiction section, her coat under her bum and a copy of the latest TARDIS book spread out on her knees, completely engrossed.

He awkwardly shuffled his feet, trying to make some noise so as not to startle her. When she didn't look up, he cleared his throat. Her head shot up from the book and she staggered to her feet immediately, almost losing her balance. "Whoa, there!" he said, reaching out with his glove-covered hands to steady her shoulders. "All right?" he asked, peering down into her wide, almost panicked eyes.

"Fine, fine," she said, squirming away from him. He held his hands out in front of him and took a non-threatening step back from her as she fidgeted with the strap of the duffel bag at her feet. "I'm sorry, I -"

"No, no, it's ok," he said, calmly, ignoring the way his own heart had raced a moment there, standing so close to her. "I own this shop, noticed you come in earlier. Just wanted to make sure you were finding everything ok."

"Oh, yeah, sorry. You probably don't like it when people read in here," the girl said, frowning apologetically. "I just got in on the train this morning and this was the only place that I found was open. I didn't plan this out very well, you see. Just hopped on a train and then...here I was! I just...well, anyway, thought I would just wander around here for a bit until the coffee shop next door opened, but then I saw that the new TARDIS book was out and I just couldn't help myself." She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear (and suddenly he wanted to do that for her) and offered him a rather charming, haphazard smile with her tongue in her teeth.

_Down, boy,_ he thought with a frown as his heart began to beat rapidly again. _She barely looks old enough to be searching for a Match and she certainly isn't yours. You've been down this path before and it only ends in heartbreak for you._

Her smile began to fade in the face of his continued silence. "Don't worry, I'll buy it," she assured him quickly, looking flustered. "I own all the rest of them; it's a brilliant series. Have you read it?"

He shook his head to clear out the candy-floss cobwebs suddenly inspired by her whisky-coloured eyes and realized that she was waiting on a response from him and then he nodded, to her confusion "Yeah, actually. I liked the one with the gas-mask children, the best so far, I think." Turning on his heel, he moved toward the front of the store, hoping that she would and would not follow in equal measure .

"Me too!" she echoed. "M'Rose Tyler," the girl continued, bending down to collect her coat and bag, and then shadowed him to the register, clutching the book. Ah, following him then.

"John Noble," he replied gruffly, swiping her card and handing her the receipt to sign.

"The ending to that one was just brilliant. 'Everybody lives!'" she quoted with an even larger smile as she handed the receipt back to him with a flourish and leaned against the counter. "Did you - "

"Coffee shop should be open now," he pointed out, gesturing to the store next to his and, to his genuine surprise, her expression seemed to fall a bit as he not-so-subtly indicated that she could go. He needed to get her out of here, away from him.

"Right," she replied, tucking her receipt into the book as a marker. "Well, it was nice to meet you, John Noble."

He grunted in response and turned away from her immediately, ducking beneath the counter until he heard the bell tinkling to indicate that she was gone. Sliding down the wall, he scrubbed a hand over his face.

He would not be attracted to this woman. She was not his. She would not be his. And anyway, it didn't matter because his behaviour had probably been so off-putting today he'd never see her again anyway.

Huh.

Why did that thought hurt so much?


	3. Chapter 3

Rose walked out of the shop feeling a little perplexed and oddly annoyed, but shook off the feelings quickly. Coffee, that's what she needed. And then she needed to figure out what in the world she was doing with her life.

But for now, coffee was a good goal.

A bright, chipper voice greeted her as she entered the cozy coffee shop next door to the surly bookseller's. "Hello!

"Um, hi," Rose answered, staring up at the brightly-coloured chalk writing that listed the drinks above the counter and feeling overwhelmed again. The coffee shop in Powell had four flavours and two of them were tea.

"Are you new here?" the red-head at the counter asked, leaning forward to eye her up.

"Yep," Rose answered, drawing her eyes off the board to the woman speaking to her. "Just got off the train this morning," she continued, gesturing to the duffel bag at her feet.

"University student?" the woman asked and when Rose shook her head, she tried again. "Just passing through, then?"

"I'm not really sure yet," Rose replied, shifting on her feet. "I just sort of...ended up here. Went to the bookshop, talked to the grumpy guy and then walked in here."

"Ooo! You got Pulled here!" she squealed, clapping her hands together and Rose's face went pale. "How romantic! Have you found him yet? Oh, this is so exciting!"

"I, I don't -" She hadn't even thought about that. She'd just gotten on that train because it had been the next one to arrive and then gotten off here because she'd been bored and hungry. Was her Pull why she was here? It hadn't felt anything like her mum had said it would...there hadn't been any obnoxious prodding in her mind, no bright neon arrow, like Keisha'd said she'd had. Was this it? Was she here to find her Match? Oh, no, no, no, she wasn't prepared for that at all.

"Amy, stop terrorizing the poor girl and let her order her coffee," came a cool, kind voice from the man looking out at them through the kitchen pass. He gave Rose an apologetic smile and then went back to his preparations.

"Sorry, sorry," Amy, apparently, said. "What would you li - oh, are you feeling ok?"

"I don't think so," Rose replied and then she promptly passed out.

-

She woke up a few moments later to a pair of bright blue eyes centimeters from her own. Rose gasped and scooted back from the man in front of her, recoiling on instinct. He sat back on his haunches, and held his hands up in front of him, the position familiar, laughter crinkling the corners of his eyes. "We meet again," the man from the bookshop said and Rose was surprised at how much the small smile on his lips seemed to make him look younger, happier.

"What happened?" she asked, looking around. She was sitting with her back against the coffeeshop counter and her head was throbbing.

"You passed out!" chirped a voice above her, the same voice that had been speaking to her immediately before she'd lost consciousness. "And you banged your head on the way down, so I ran over to get John to take a look at you."

John offered her a hand up, his large, black gloves engulfing her small blue ones, and pulled her to her feet. "It's just a small cut and it'll probably bruise," he said, once she was upright. "But you don't need stitches and I'm pretty sure you don't have a concussion."

"You a doctor?" Rose inquired, raising an eyebrow at him and putting her hands on her hips.

"Something like that," he answered, raising an eyebrow right back and crossing his arms over his chest.

"So, what'll it be?" Amy asked, breaking their odd stare-down. "On the house, since our counter tried to brain you," she added with a grin.

"D'you have anything that shouts 'I just got off a train in the middle of nowhere, I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, and I just passed out in front of a bunch of strangers'?" Rose asked, weakly, with a small chuckle.

"Caramel mocha with extra whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles," Amy replied instantly, smiling at her. "John, you dunce, c'mon, help her over to a chair."

He rolled his eyes, but picked up Rose's bag for her and deposited it next to a chair at the closest table. "I'm not an invalid," Rose mumbled.

"Eh, it's just easier to do what she says," John replied with a smile and, to both of their surprise, a wink. He shifted awkwardly for a moment and then, though he seemed to fight it, sat down in the chair across from hers. "Feeling better?"

"Just embarrassed," Rose replied. "And still a bit lost. I've never done this whole 'go off on your own and experience life' thing. Guess I don't quite know where to start."

"I'd start with where I was sleeping tonight," John said, catching Amy's eye and silently ordering his usual.

"Oh," Rose answered, frowning again. "See, I hadn't even thought of that. Are there any hotels near here?"

John was just about to respond when Amy breezed up with their drinks. "Rory and I were thinking about renting out our spare bedroom, actually. It's got its own loo and we're hardly ever there during the day," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "How about that?"

"R-really?" Rose stuttered. "You'd let me rent your spare room just...just like that? You don't even know me! You don't even know my name or where I'm from or how long I'm staying!"

Amy shrugged and then smiled. "Amy Williams. What's your name?"

"Rose Tyler," she responded.

"There. Now we know one another. You want the room or not?"

"Um, ok," Rose responded, feeling better having made at least one decision today on purpose.

"Good!" Amy answered before turning back to the counter to start taking the orders of the other customers now filing into the shop. "Rory!" she yelled and the man in the kitchen poked his head out again. "I rented out the room!" He gave her a silent thumbs up and then smiled fondly, shaking his head, as she turned away.

Rose turned back to the quiet man sitting across from her, studying his paper cup as though it held all the secrets of the world. "Well, that worked out pretty well. What's your next advice, Doctor?"

He blinked at the nickname and then smiled broadly and, once more, Rose was entranced with the way the expression changed his whole face. He was good-looking, she decided. Not in a conventional way and not in a way she'd ever imagined she'd find attractive but he was, nevertheless. His arresting features all worked together to create a ruggedly handsome, austere man with the most gorgeous eyes she'd ever seen. And she appreciated the way that jumper of his clung to his torso, showing off a lean, muscled form under that leather jacket. She wanted to crawl into his gaze and reveal all of his tightly-held secrets and her mother had always joked she couldn't be trusted around older men. _(She'd had a crush on the sixth form maths teacher when she'd only been five and Errol Flynn when she'd been seven.)_

"Well, if you're going to stay, you'll need something to keep you occupied during the day. Classes or a job or a hobby or something," he replied, taking a pull from his black coffee and watching her with interest. She was turning out to be far more fascinating than he'd thought and, if she was going to be staying with Amy and Rory, he'd be seeing her a lot more anyway.

"Hmm," Rose thought. "Well, I'm not ready to start taking classes and I'd rather not burn through my savings just yet, so a job it is, I suppose. Any ideas on one of those?"

"You could work for me," John replied, quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he'd even processed them.

Rose quirked that eyebrow at him again. "Really?"

He shifted in his seat and shrugged, trying not to look at his reasons too hard. "My last assistant just took off and I need someone to help me get the shop in order before the term begins. You any good with numbers?"

Rose nodded and then smiled. "Wow. A place to stay, a job, a free cup of coffee, a new book and some new friends. Maybe I'm good at this after all!"

Drawing out his wallet, John left a few bills on the table and stood up. "Just come on over to the shop when you're done with your coffee and I'll show you around. I'm sure Amy and Rory will take you back to show you around your new room when the shop closes tonight."

"Sounds good!" Rose enthused, with adventure-bright eyes. "And John…" she said, making him turn back to her as he left. "Thanks."

"My pleasure," he answered, nodding and hurrying out, back to his own shop. Oh, this one was going to hurt so much more than it ever had before.

-

Almost six months later, Rose and John had developed such a tight rapport with one another that he wasn't sure how he'd ever run the shop without her. The books were in order, the shelves were far more organized than they'd ever been, he was making far more money than he ever had and the shop was always teeming with patrons. Rose had organized a book club that met at the coffee shop on Thursday evenings, she'd sweet talked Rory into having a poetry slam once a month, and John had never been happier in his entire life.

He'd also never been more anxious, aware that he was living on borrowed moments of stolen time. Rose had told him once that she was twenty-one, almost twenty two now, but they never talked about her Pull or Soul-matching. She'd never asked him about his situation and he'd been too fearful to ask about hers.

He knew it was only a matter of time until she left him, as they all inevitably did, but even that couldn't stop him from falling a little bit more in love with her every time she stumbled into the shop looking sleepy early in the morning or slid the book ladder across the shelves singing Beauty and the Beast songs or heatedly debated with him which one of the TARDIS protagonists was the best. Every time some pretty boy came waltzing into the store or bumped into her at the pub, he held his breath and hoped that today wasn't the day she would break his heart, because it had never been like this before. Nothing had ever been like this before.

-

The afternoon of her twenty-second birthday, Rose was sitting at the kitchen table eating ice cream and listening to Amy chatter about the day. John had given her the day off, promising to take her out for a birthday dinner that night and Rory was manning the afternoon lull in the coffee shop alone so they could have some 'girl time'.

Eyeing Rose slyly over her now-empty bowl of ice cream, Amy casually asked, "So, when are you going to tell him?"

"Hmm?" Rose said, her spoon still in her mouth, brow furrowed.

"John," Amy clarified, impatiently. "When are you going to tell him?"

"When am I going to tell John what?" Rose asked, putting down her spoon.

"That he's your Match, stupid-head," Amy asserted, rolling her eyes. "You've been waiting FOREVER. Seriously, being around the two of you is like sexual tension torture."

"What?" Rose squeaked, her face going nearly as pale as it had been that first day she'd passed out in the coffee shop. "What makes you think he's my Match?"

Amy's eyes widened. "Well, he is, isn't he?"

"I don't know!" she replied, looking panicked. "How should I know? Wait, that's bad isn't it? Shouldn't I know? I should know, right? So if I don't know, it's not him? Amy!"

Amy's mouth dropped open. "Rose, you two are the most sickeningly sweet thing I have ever seen in my whole life and I made you a hot cocoa yesterday with double whipped cream, was stirred with a peppermint stick and had jelly babies on top of it. Don't you feel your Pull around him?"

"I don't know!" Rose shouted, standing up and pacing around the table. "I've thought about it sometimes, of course I have, but it's not like anything that my Mum said it would be or my friends or...And he's been hurt so many times, Amy. I don't want to hurt him again and I don't want to leave him...but I don't know what I'm supposed to feel like and, and, why did you have to bring this up?" She was agitatedly pacing around the table, pulling at her hair and Amy rushed to her side, shepherding her back to the chair.

"Rose, calm down! I can't tell you what it's supposed to feel like; it feels different for everyone. But let's talk it through, ok? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you...it just seems so obvious to all of us, I thought you knew already."

Rose put her head down on the table miserably. "I don't know where to start," she mumbled.

"Well, let's talk about how you got here," Amy said, pragmatically. "Why'd you take that train?"

"It was the first one leaving the station," Rose replied automatically.

"Are you sure that's the only reason?" Amy asked. "No nudges or weird feelings or anything?"

"Nope," Rose answered, shaking her head. "All I could think about was getting on a train and getting away from home."

"Ok, how about when you got off. Why'd you get off here, of all places?"

"Dunno," Rose answered again, frustrated. "I've been through all of this in my head over and over again, Amy. I was just hungry and I was tired of being on the train, so, the next place it stopped, I got off."

"And where did you go once you got here?" Amy prodded.

"To the bookshop," she replied. "But you know that already. I was walking down the main street and it was the only place in town that was open! That's just...just logic, or luck or something. Not anything special. My mum said she had this prodding feeling that made her go into the pub where my dad was. And my friend Keisha said there were these bright arrows in her head that pointed her where to go. There was no prodding, no arrows, just me. Being hungry and cold."

"Still, you ended up in the shop with John. How about when you first met him, any sparks?"

"He sort of snuck up on me. Scared me, he did. But I...I don't know! I want it to be, Amy, I really do, but I just don't know! What if I'm wrong and I touch him and it's just awkward? I'll have to move."

"Tell me about how you feel when you're with him, Rose," Amy tried again, unwilling to give this up. They were meant for one another, she knew it.

"I just...I feel safe," Rose replied, slowly. "I feel warm and happy, like he's the most solid thing in the universe. Like everything around me could change but as long as I still had him, I'd be fine. And right now, even though he's only a few stupid blocks away and I know I'm going to see him in a few hours, I feel like I want to be with him, like I want to see him smile or make him laugh and hold his hand." Amy sniffled suddenly and Rose looked up at her in surprise. "What?"

"Oh, honey," Amy said, laying a hand on Rose's shoulder. "That's your Pull."

"Really?" Rose asked and then, suddenly, all those golden feelings she'd gathered together over the past few months, the comforting warmth of John's presence, the happy glow she felt whenever she was near him, and the underlying tug, pulling her ever toward him, clicked into place. "He's my Match," she breathed, glad she was sitting down already.

"He's your Match," Amy repeated, grinning at her. "Wait, where are you going?" she laughed, as Rose stood up and grabbed her coat from the hook by the door, rushing out.

Rose pulled her glove off her hand and waggled her bare fingers at Amy. "To make up for lost time!" she yelled, grinning.

-

The bell over the door tinkled and John looked up to tell whatever poor sod had just come wandering in that he was just closing up, when Rose came barging in, breathless and a bit disheveled, her right hand in her pocket.

Oh, she was beautiful.

He started around the counter, "Rose, what -"

Rose charged right up to him and, to his immense surprise, she backed him into the wall, and then, in the next moment, she was up on her tip toes and her right hand - her un-gloved, bare right hand, came up to grip the back of his neck at the same time her lips crashed into his.

He had heard stories about what it was like, the first time your Match touched you like that, skin to skin. He'd heard how colours suddenly made sense, how it felt as though every single nerve in your body was tingling with electricity, how the entire universe narrowed to one single pin-prick that you could feel, how mountains moved, how oceans roared, how fates shouted.

Nothing could possibly have done it justice.

His long arms wrapped around Rose's waist, crushing her against him tighter and his mouth glided against hers instinctively, exploring brand new, incredible pathways he'd never even dreamed about correctly. Several long, wet, intense moments later, when somehow both of his gloves (and his jacket) had been discarded and he'd discovered that Rose's hair was just as soft as it had always looked and they were thrillingly horizontal behind the counter, they finally paused for air, grinning at one another stupidly.

"How long have you known?" he breathed, tucking a piece of her wayward hair behind her ear, as he'd so longed to way back when he'd first met her.

"Subconsciously, since the moment we met, I think," Rose replied, running a hand over his cheekbone and then back into his hair, which made him almost purr with happiness. "Consciously...about fifteen minutes."

"Oh," he laughed, happily, blue eyes crinkling with joy. "Well, I'm glad you figured it out."

"Me too," she responded, leaning up to kiss him again. "Amy called me a stupid-head," she added, catching his next laugh against her lips.

"Well, she is usually right," he chuckled and then jumped in surprise as Rose's hand discovered wide, lovely expanse of bare skin under his jumper. "Rose," he tried, as her lips began to trail down his jaw toward his neck. "Rose," he said more insistently, despite the very clever thing she'd just done to his Adam's Apple and the very emphatic thing that was beginning to tingle elsewhere. "Maybe, uh, we should go back to my flat?"

Rose was on her feet quickly, pulling him along with her. "Run?" she asked, breathless and beautiful and his and he didn't care how long he'd waited, he knew in that moment that he would've waited nine hundred years to stand here, hand in hand beside her, ready to take on the world.

"Run, Rose Tyler!"


End file.
